Alright, I was out of town over the weekend, and got back just in time to read that a VP announcement from McCain’s camp seemed likely to happen this week. Since then, I’ve found out a little more, and I’m going to try and sort through it below.

By most standards, it looks like the pick will be Mitt Romney – though it is worth pointing out that four other names are getting thrown around: Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee (currently in Africa), Tom Ridge, and Rob Portman. That list doesn’t look all that different from the one I reported a while back, except that Eric Cantor, a Rep. from VA, has been replaced by Mike Huckabee – but I’ll get to that later.

This wild speculation is the result, largely, of an article by Bob Novak saying that it was very possible that McCain would announce this week. It made sense, since it would up-end Obama (currently flying around the Middle East), and allow him time to introduce the pick before August and the olympics and political conventions.

At the same time, multiple sources from both the Romney and McCain campaigns leaked to Kavon Nikrad and Jason Bonham of www.race42008.com that Romney was the pick and that the announcement would come soon. This was picked up by My Man Mitt, Marc Ambinder, and www.hotair.com. Romney’s stock on Intrade also started to rise rapidly.

Within the past few hours, Novak backed off his story, saying that the McCain camp had decided, for what ever reason, that this week was not the time. Race 4 2008 sticks by its sources, which I tend to believe are reliable. In fact, the delay in announcing may actually indicate a Romney pick, because Romney is out of the country until the end of this week, which would make an announcement difficult. Both Ambinder and Hot Air are following that line of thinking. As mentioned, this is really the ideal week to make the announcement, so not doing it now suggests an inability to do so. All of the other likely candidates are in the country, which means that there would not likely be a need to put it off.

This may still change – Canada isn’t that far away, it could be someone other than Romney, and Romney may not be present for the announcement.

But it now looks like the decision has been made – so look for an announcement by the end of the month at the latest.